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Underwater glider “Hai Xiang” successfully completes sea trials

On June 11st, CSSRC’s underwater glider “Hai Xiang” successfully completed sea trials after 20 days’efforts made by the project team.“Hai Xiang”is one of a series of gliders which was developed independently by CSSRC funded by “Ocean Commonweal Special Project”, designed for ocean environment investigation and unmanned systems surveillance. It holds the maximum available payload among the same kind of gliders both at home and abroad. The maximum depth it reached was 503 m in the sea trials.

“Hai Xiang”travels 7 days during this sea trails, and completed regular tasks, deployment and recovery, gliders’ team networking at sea state 4. Its investigation on ocean environment covers 112 km2, gaining environment parameters such as temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen and chlorophyl, which realizes the expectation of application demonstration.

During the trial, the sea states in the trial zone ranges from 1 to 4, creating a complicated hydro-meteorologicalenvironment. Besides, multiple thunderstorms occurred and the maximum wind speed reached 17 m/s. The team members, however, worked actively in joint efforts to overcome the severe sea states, and completed trails in a rather smooth way. During the implementation of“Ocean Commonweal Special Project” process, “Hai Xiang”glider completed multiple lake trials and three sea trails, generating resourceful application experiences. It realized test datas’ remote long-distance transmission in the sea and condition parameters’long-distance dynamic monitoring. It accessed undersea gliders’ operation capability in actual sea state, and validated its reliability for engineering application. The success of the project lays solid foundation for CSSRC’s undersea gliders’further research, development and application.